


Cauterized

by Riza



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:45:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riza/pseuds/Riza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt on the kink meme: "Moriarty manages to kill John somehow- blowing up a building, a fire, or something that completely destroys his body and there is no hope for survival. Sherlock is totally distraught and snaps completely. He literally cannot live without John.</p><p>He is hysterical and inconsolable, so Lestrade calls Mycroft to get him. Mycroft intends to take Sherlock to hospital, because Sherlock is just rampaging and cannot stop. But before they can sedate him, Sherlock's heart just completely give out, and he falls dead in his brother's arms. All Mycroft can do is cradle his baby brother's body (and maybe cry?)."</p><p>I couldn't bear to kill off both characters, so only John dies in this. (Well, he's dead before the start of the story).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cauterized

The tears don't come.

They never come anymore. It's been years and years since he's last cried. In fact, he can't even remember the last time he felt that moisture on his face. When he was a child, maybe? Or a teenager, furious with a world that would not work for him. Tears of rage, and pain, and frustration, but not sadness. He's never cared enough to shed tears of sadness.

Until now-- and he can feel the hurt and agony bubbling up inside him, like someone has reached in and torn out a piece of his heart. He can feel each beat, jagged and painful. And it hurts. It hurts beyond belief. It hurts so badly that he honestly cannot believe that something hasn't happened to his heart: that Moriarty has fulfilled on his promise to burn it out of him.

Because John is gone.

Gone. Erased. Nonexistent. Never coming back--

He screams, one long shriek of pure grief and horror. It rips its way out of his throat, leaving it raw and burning. He can hear them behind him, whispering to each other. He hears everything, internalizes it, files it away for future reference as he has always done: Lestrade's heavy breathing as he fights with his own grief, Anderson and Donovan muttering to each other, Anthea's fingers clicking away on her Blackberry.

It seems his brain cannot even stop its brilliant reasoning, though his body knows that there is no longer any purpose to it, now that his partner-- his other half-- his very soul is gone. He would like nothing more than to be removed at last from the constant sensory overload, to shut down for good, leave this world and all of the pain and grief and hatred it has brought him, but all he can do is scream. Distantly he hears Mycroft's footsteps as his brother draws near and kneels down beside him. He feels the pressure of Mycroft's arms around him, but he shrugs them off. He staggers to his feet and makes his way over to the body.

This is the only thing he can see clearly any longer. The fog and mist around him clears and John is lying before him, covered in a sheet, leaving only his head exposed. He can see the lines around the eyes, the bags underneath, the way his hair has come out of its usual neat comb and has fallen across his forehead. The eyes are shut. The part of his jumper exposed from under the blanket is stained with blood.

It is this, more than anything else, that undoes him.

Memories overwhelm him: memories of their moments together, little moments that he knows John might not remember but have stayed with him all the same. Seeing John for the first time and realizing that standing before him was a man much stronger and much more hurt than anyone had given him credit for. Watching John's face as he told him what he had seen, that really, the only real question was Iraq or Afghanistan, and watching the expression flit across John's face-- not of confusion or disgust or revulsion but of surprise and awe. John finding the head in the fridge for the first time, not realizing that he had put it there as a test, to gauge his reaction, and his relief that John did not yell or throw it out or tell him what a freak he was. The search, frantic, exhilarating, for the cabbie, the heart-stopping fear of a gunshot, and the discovery that his life had been saved by none other than this ordinary-looking man, this man who was none other than the most extraordinary person he had ever met. Their first kiss, hesitant, cautious, gaining speed, and afterwards in a few short hours he lay in bed with John Watson, knowing completely and utterly that this was his other half.

He can't think, can't even breathe. It's not the memories; it's the fact that he's crying and choking out sobs. He has never let himself come this undone before. He has never even known that he could. But the fury and the anger and the grief that he has only known this man for barely more than a year, long enough to know that John was his soul and his heart and his conscience, is more than enough to break that control. It's not fair, it isn't right-- why was he allowed to have such a brief hint at what was to come?

He can hear sirens in the distance and thinks that they all must be mental if they believe they can take John away from him. He would rather die. In a disconnected way, he realizes that this is not healthy: logically he has not known the man for long enough to be so passionately in love with him. But he is far beyond the healthy stage. He is aware enough to know that much. And haven't they all said that love is an irrational thing?

Murmured voices overwhelm his ears, and he clasps his hands to them, shuts them out, like he used to do when he was a child and the sounds and pressures would get too overwhelming for him. He remembers doing that once when John happened to be in the room. John had gone to him and sat next to him. Somehow John had known instinctively that he did not want to be touched, could not bear to be touched, because in a state like that the lightest pressure felt like the slap of a hand. They sat there together until the feelings of the outside world receded and he was able to think again.

He is still weeping, knelt over John's body.

A paramedic touches his arm. Without looking he flings his arm out, knocking the man back. _Don't touch my John._

Mycroft says something to him, but he keeps his hands clasped firmly to his ears, blocking out the sound so he can keep his focus on John, as if through sheer force of will he can bring John back into his arms.

Someone-- probably Mycroft, he never could abide people ignoring him-- forces his hands away from his ears and he turns, snarling, a demon possessed by rage and grief and fury at the injustice of it all. Leave me alone! he wants to say, but he can't get the words out. He fights to get his hands free, but Mycroft-- it is Mycroft after all-- has them firmly in his grasp, far stronger than he looks. A paramedic jabs a needle into his wrist and finally Sherlock manages to form a coherent word.

“John,” he says, his voice hoarse and broken.

The word follows him down into the soft blackness.

He is determined to stay there, and never return.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for the Sherlock community, and I wrote it after I found out that a person I knew quite well, and one person I knew but not as well, were both killed in accidents, along with last year, when there was a fire that killed three other students, and over the summer, when a boy I knew died in a car crash. I tried to channel some of that anger and sadness for this fic.
> 
> It's blatant, angsty schmoop. You have been warned.
> 
> This is my first fic ever for the Sherlock fandom. Hasn't been beta'd or Britpicked, either, because I suuuuuck. Sorry for any errors.


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